THE relief we all must be feeling at the news that the death toll in New Orleans will be a fraction of what was originally thought – with a number in the hundreds rather than in the tens of thousands – is welcome.

The news – you can’t call it “good news,” but it is far more positive news than anybody was expecting this week – suggests something else as well: We’re feeling relieved because we had been stoked up to believe the absolute worst.

There was, in the air in the days immediately following the collapse of New Orleans’s water defenses, an overwhelming sense of panic, with the panic in turn leading to hysteria, with bogus stories floating around about cannibalism and unconfirmed and probably erroneous tales of widespread rape and murder.

Something that had never happened before was happening before our eyes on television – a large American city was being engulfed by water with tens of thousands trapped in unsanitary and dangerous conditions. It’s understandable that this unprecendented event would provoke desperate feelings.

But I submit the cause of the panic wasn’t simply the unprecedented horror we were witnessing. It also grew out of the shockingly irresponsible conduct of local and state elected officials.

Now, I’m not talking here about the failure of the mayor of New Orleans to deploy a bunch of schoolbuses to help evacuate the town, or whether the evacuation plan was followed and when states of emergency were announced.

The federal government has taken the brunt of the public criticism for seeming out of touch and uncomprehending in those first few days. But what Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco did and didn’t do was worse. They consciously and deliberately assumed an attitude of powerlessness and hopelessness in the face of New Orleans’ woes that directly contributed to the lawlessness, chaos and disorder.

Nagin and Blanco acted as if they were impotent bystanders rather than elected officials charged by those who put them in office with maintaining civil order and ensuring the public’s safety.

What did they do? They gave angry interviews. They screamed and yelled about the federal government being bad. They cried. They delayed. They said they didn’t care very much about looting, and then said they cared a lot about looting, and then didn’t do anything about the looting. And they didn’t coordinate with each other at all.

Now we’re hearing that part of the problem is Nagin and Blanco don’t get along, that Blanco never forgave Nagin for supporting her Republican challenger in her gubernatorial bid in 2003.

Hmm, sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Here in New York, Rudy Giuliani crossed party lines to support Mario Cuomo over George Pataki and the two had a famously wretched and horrible relationship.

It was terrible. But then came 9/11. And instantly, everything changed. The attack on New York caused both men to suspend their enmity instantly and to make common cause. They were inseparable in the days and weeks that followed, and that famous credit-hog Giuliani was always careful to include Pataki in any and every event, ceremony, meeting and word of praise he participated in, received or doled out.

That’s the nature of leadership at a time of genuine crisis.

What’s really contemptible about the conduct of Nagin and Blanco – and, to a lesser extent, the conduct of Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter – is how self-interested it really was and is.

All these officials are on a knife’s edge, their political viability on the line. As the months pass, their failures on the front lines of this disaster are going to be hotly debated. Thus it served their own narrow, selfish, partisan, political interest to act as if they were powerless and overwhelmed and without resources.

If they can convince the people of New Orleans and the voters in Louisiana that the whole calamity was really the fault of a callous and incompetent federal government, then they might earn a reprieve from the political Siberia to which common sense suggests they will both be consigned.

Rather than project an attitude of calm determination, of steely purpose, as Haley Barbour did in ravaged Mississippi, Nagin and Blanco contributed to the panic. They fed the despair. They encouraged the anger. And they indulged their petty personal grievances rather than rising above them for the common good.

They did themselves, their constituents and their country a monstrous disservice.